An important voice in southern fiction, Reynolds Price wrote stories about “ordinary people” and their struggles “to find their place in the world.” He made his debut on the American literary stage with A Long and Happy Life (1962), earning critical acclaim for his “pungent Southern dialogue, highly wrought prose style and vivid evocation of rural Southern life.” Price penned thirteen novels and dozens of short stories and taught writing and poetry at his alma mater, Duke University, for more than fifty years, inspiring a new generation of southern novelists.

San Francisco–based artist Will Wilson has been creating realist, sometimes trompe l’œil, paintings for more than thirty years. He made five portraits of Price, from small heads like this one to larger likenesses of the writer in his home or study.